First ever 40k game was fun. I spectated the first round when my two friends duked it out. Friend 1 has played 40K lots before. Friend 2 played a little a long time ago. We had two 500 points armies, one Primaris marines, the other Death Guard. Friend 2 commanded the Death Guard and complained the whole way through, even though he was clearly ahead the whole time. We just fought. No objectives. Some random household items on the table as cover.

When I got a go it was me as the Primaris against Friend 1 with the Death Guard. Very quickly got a handle for the shooting phase and rounds went by fast. It's a very workable system. Friend 1 had a series of hilarious mishaps. Twice his dudes with plasma guns exploded. Then when our big guys had gotten into melee finally, his psyker exploded. We went six rounds and I won by points. I barely moved. Just kept range and laid into him with fire. His strategy was to advance behind the screen of his poxwalkers, but I managed to chew through that blob before he had closed to melee and I got some good shots into his CSMs.

We're going to play again this Sunday with proxied armies. Friend 2 wants to try Tyranids. I'm going Eldar. Friend 1 might stick with Death Guard. He's a Nurgle fan.

For my second game, Friend 1 is going Death Guard again, basically just Typhus + plague marines. Friend 2 is in love with nids and is going for their big boys. I turn have drummed up a volume of fire dark eldar army. Elites and HQ can do some good work in melee. Everything else is focused on shooting. Lots of warriors for cheap law of averages stuff. (30 shots per round overall, all of them hitting on 3+ and wounding on 4+ regardless of toughness.) Two squads of scourge with dark lances, which can safely out range, out move, and out shoot basically anything. Should be fun.

Didn't get to play last night. Started late and the game between Friends 1 and 2 went long. That was fine by me. Was fun to watch.

Friend 2 got super salty when Friend 1 two-rounded his tyrannosaurus fex with a chaos predator. Friend 2 still won because Friend 1 had that predator, two squads of plague marines, and Typhus, which proved insufficient for a horde of gaunts. Despite being ahead every round and winning the game -- and doing so because of his army comp and use thereof -- Friend 2 complained the whole through over just about every rule and said he only won because he had good dice rolls.

Afterward I told Friend 1 I thought his mistake was not having any swarm / horde / meat shield units. Seems to me the trademark Death Guard ability, ignoring any and all wounds on roll of 5+, is strongest when you spread it around. A swarm of pox walkers + Typhus would have been utterly insane value for the points.

Friend 2 seems in love with the blob. Wants to try orks next. Think I can work up an eldar army that will just kite his boys endlessly and blow them up with grenades.

Finished Thousand Sons, tbh the whole book I actually didn't like Magnus a lot he was an arrogant dick but by the end yeah it was fucked and I just wanted him to warp stomp some yiffs. Currently on First Heretic, only a couple of chapters in but I actually like Lorgar a lot, he doesn't give any fucks bitch slapping Malcador AND guilliman in the same scene. Does anyone know in which book the actual Horus vs. Emperor showdown happens in? Is it spread out over like 6 books or something?

Finished Thousand Sons, tbh the whole book I actually didn't like Magnus a lot he was an arrogant dick but by the end yeah it was fucked and I just wanted him to warp stomp some yiffs. Currently on First Heretic, only a couple of chapters in but I actually like Lorgar a lot, he doesn't give any fucks bitch slapping Malcador AND guilliman in the same scene. Does anyone know in which book the actual Horus vs. Emperor showdown happens in? Is it spread out over like 6 books or something?

Yeah Lorgar continues to be likable for the most part, its Kor Phaeron and Erebus who are really the arch dickheads of the legion (universe). There has never really been a moment where I was like "wow Lorgar is a dickhead". I may be forgetting something but he seems like a p ok guy.

Hamming again this weekend. Friend 1 is sticking with his sick boys. Gonna field some poxwalkers this time, I think. Friend 2 is giving orks a spin. He seems pretty enamored with their, well, orkiness. I'm rolling with the murder clowns. Still doing fairly small armies (750 pts) on not a super large table. This time we're gonna do missions. Should be a good time.

Still finalizing my army. Harlequins don't have a huge roster, so there aren't that many choices. Big one left for me is whether I go with transports or just put more bodies on the board.

Happy to report the MURDERCLOWNS were victorious. Came down to the wire. The general harlequin strat is get into melee ASAP and murder everyone. That process is complicated when you're up against Death Guard. I tried to hold range and snipe his warlord (Typhus) with my psyker and Death Jester. The former was quite effective. The latter totally useless because his gun his AP 0 and Typhus has 2+ terminator armor. gf gfgfgf. I also tried to snipe his bloat drone with my tank, which only half worked. In retrospect I should've closed faster with his swarms of pox walkers. It was always going to be bloody because of Papa Nurgle's bag of tricks, but my dudes dished out much worse than they got in the fight phase. We both started with 750 points. Ended at the bottom of round 6 with him tabled and me with my two HQs and a single biker dude, each with only a single wound left on them.

I'm told this is the work of a Goon. There exist beastmen in the 40k lore. They sometimes get into the Imperial Guard. (Basically, we'll let you mutant freaks live if you're willing to die for the Imperium.) So this guy took fantasy gors and minotaurs and made a Guard army.

I've always been interested in 40K but obvi never played. Do you buy the actual models for all of these armies, or do you just use like quarters and be like "yo that one is [Unit X]?" Also, how important is painting? That's the part I think I would blow at. And also aren't these models like $5-20 a pop?

Games Workshop intends that everybody will be playing with the models that match their army, down to the equipment and the paint scheme. At a GW tournament, if my army has a 5-man Harlequin troupe armed with fusion pistols and harlequin blades that belongs to the Masque of Midnight Sorrow, I need to have five harlequin player models painted in the Midnight Sorrow color scheme, equipped with fusion pistols and harlequin blades.

People deviate from that plenty in non-GW events. The group I'm playing with now, only one guy owns any models, so we all use from his collection and proxy like mad. My harlequin army was actually made up of chaos space marines and gaurdsmen missing their arms. The one friend who wants to run an ork army full of goblins is going to have so many units we won't have enough models. He plans to use candy as the stand-ins.

There are two problems with proxies. The first is confusing which units are yours, which would be impossible with proper models. The second and more important one is unit size. The game isn't played on a grid. You move things around with a tape measure. You measure from the model's base. If you're a millimeter out of weapon range, you can't shoot. With using quarters or whatever, you probably have a smaller base than you should.

None of the problems with proxies are insurmountable, especially if your proxies are other models (e.g. this space marine is an ork nob).

And yes, the models are quite expensive. So too the paint and various tools GW wants you to use. The Harlequin army I used last week was 750 points. Pretty small. It would cost about $250 from GW, not counting paint. I'm told EBay is advisable.